The avian influenza virus, Bird Flu outbreak advances across the Midwestern United States. Many egg-dependent companies are now battling this matter by simply importing eggs from unaffected poultry markets overseas, while others are looking towards plant-based egg alternatives.
For many years, U.S. has been comfortable in producing eggs at a much lower cost and since the past several years it has been heavily exporting its eggs to Canada who relatively lacks in the production of poultry products. Apparently this is not the case now. As neighboring Mexico has been struggling inside dealing with its own outbreaks of the avian virus, the U.S. is now left with the choice of importing eggs from unaffected regions of Europe. Avril, an agri-food group of companies owns France’s most popular egg brand, Matines, has reported that it is facing an increase in demand for eggs from the United States and soon plans to make large shipments this June.
While companies increasingly imports egg supplies from producers in the nearby regions, they are finding it hard to keep up with higher prices due to the outbreak. This virus has so far affected more than 39 million birds and have wiped out nearly a quarter of the hens that lay eggs which are marketed as dried, liquid or frozen eggs to many food manufacturers. Since April, the wholesale market price of these eggs jumped from 63-cents a dozen to $1.83. The wholesale price of “shell eggs that are commonly sold in cartons at the countrywide grocery stores, has also increased from $1.19 a dozen to $2.03.
Sanofi, a multinational pharmaceutical company said that it is closely monitoring the outbreak with a collaboration with the state agriculture department in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has the fourth largest egg-laying flock of the country and so far no avian virus attack has been reported there. Similar pharmaceutical companies are maintaining strict preventive measures for their egg processing system and are including more powerful biosecurity procedures to provide suppliers with protection from this or any avian outbreak.
